Color Terms in Persian and English Metaphoric Expressions: Al-Hasnawi’s Cognitive Schemes in Focus

Banafsheh Ghafel, Abbass Eslami Rasekh

Abstract

Abstract Metaphorical language is an indispensable part of human life, involving language, thought and action. Metaphors are used to express abstract concepts in terms of concrete entities. As a subclass of metaphoric expressions, colorbased metaphors are culture specific so much so that they are, at times, difficult to understand by non-native speakers. The current comparative study is focused on metaphoric expressions of English and Persian within Al- Hasnawi’s (2007) model. The present study goes above and beyond simple metaphoric expressions of color by focusing on idioms, similes, metonymies and proverbs as long as they include at least one color term. Thus, the aims of the current study are twofold (i) to identify the extent of the diversity of the cognitive mapping between English and Persian speakers as long as color terms are concerned; (ii) to scrutinize their cognitive equivalency in translation. To do so, English examples were collected from Phillip (2006) and Allen (2008). Next, the Persian ones were searched from dictionaries in Persian. The findings of this comparative analysis show that, although there is some similarity in cognitive mapping between English and Persian, the majority of metaphorical expressions are culture-bound. Such expressions are orientated toward different mapping conditions. Considering cognitive equivalency, the results indicate that there is only a relative equivalency between English and Persian. Key words: Metaphorical expression; Cognitive schema; Translation; Culture

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